Sporting CP B

Sporting built the side to give academy graduates a bridge into the first team rather than send them straight from youth football to the senior squad, and for a few months in 2002/03 that bridge carried a teenager who barely touched it: Cristiano Ronaldo played two matches for the reserves before his rise made the arrangement look almost incidental. The team did not last much longer in that form — it was disbanded in 2004, after also passing João Moutinho through its ranks. A reform opening the professional divisions to reserve sides brought the team back in 2012, this time competing in Liga Portugal 2. Marco Silva was in charge when it won its only trophy, the Taça de Honra da AF Lisboa, beating Benfica 1-0 in the final on 20 July 2014 through a goal from André Martins in the 41st minute. The run in the second tier ended in relegation, and in 2018 the club shut the side down for a second time. President Frederico Varandas reversed that decision in 2019, and the team returned in 2020 in the third tier, Liga 3. It worked its way back up, finishing second in the promotion play-off in 2024/25 and returning to Liga Portugal 2. The side plays in the same green and white as the main Sporting team and carries the same crest, without a nickname of its own beyond the borrowed "Leões B." Its fixtures against Benfica B and Porto B are billed in the Portuguese press as Clássicos, inherited rivalries rather than ones built from scratch. Home games are played at the Estádio Aurélio Pereira, which holds 1,180 people — a stadium built for exactly the kind of football the club exists to produce, the sort Ronaldo passed through on his way to somewhere bigger.